Alcott is usually not a subtle proselytizer - the Rose books include screeds against corsets, fashion, penny dreadfuls and French novels. On the other hand, corsets, fashion, penny dreadfuls and French novels were all pretty safe targets, whereas going mano a mano with racial attitudes and miscegenation laws might wreck her rep as a nice clean children's author. So perhaps she was trying to sneak it in under the radar? (Although it can't have been too controversial or that tactic wouldn't have worked. I can't imagine Alcott could have married Annabel off to an African prince without causing howls of protest.)
It occurs to me that all the material I've seen on the Chinese in America in the 19th C is about laboring Chinese; it's quite possible intelligentsia level Chinese were seen as quite a different thing. Certainly it would remove some of the economic causes of resentment.
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Date: 2010-04-04 06:34 pm (UTC)It occurs to me that all the material I've seen on the Chinese in America in the 19th C is about laboring Chinese; it's quite possible intelligentsia level Chinese were seen as quite a different thing. Certainly it would remove some of the economic causes of resentment.